Michael Radford’s The Merchant of Venice (2004)

Why did we pick this film? Easy answer: William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is part of the freshman curriculum this year. So we picked this film in order to give Shakespeare readers a chance to see a complete produced version of the play, one that takes advantage of the familiar medium of film, one that will complement the staged production currently offered at the Guthrie Theater, one that will enhance the readers’ understanding of Shakespeare’s language. You’re welcome.

More complex answer: Shakespeare on film offers us a unique opportunity to examine the art of film, and Radford’s version of Merchant puts the medium in strong relief. Shakespeare, as you know, wrote for the stage. And the stage is an imagined space. Sitting and watching a stage production of The Wizard of Oz, you don’t expect to see a real tornado on stage; you see things that suggest a tornado is happening and you accept it. In the film, you get what appears to be a real tornado. Yes, it’s a special effect, but film is a realistic space where if the script says “Lady Cheesefritter takes a long walk on the beach while contemplating true love,” the director is likely to go on location and shoot the scene in just such a place. In the theater you might get a few piles of sand, while the sound effects guy pipes in the sound of waves crashing on the beach. Film looks real.

What does this have to do with Shakespeare? Well look at Shakespeare’s language for a minute. After Macbeth kills King Duncan, for example, he reports his “discovery” of the body to Macduff:

Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood,
And his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature
For ruin’s wasteful entrance; there the murderers,
Steeped in the colors of their trade, their daggers
Unmannerly breeched with gore. (2.3.130-135)

Shakespeare is giving a picture perfect description of a scene that his audience cannot see. Much of the language in Shakespeare does this, evoking pictures in the mind through the use of metaphor, allusion, and rich sensory description. And this suits the stage beautifully where one’s imagination is engaged and ready to follow the language’s prompting.

In films, the emphasis is often on visual imagery. It would take a director 10 seconds to show the grotesque scene of the slaughtered Duncan and his attendants. And given our current penchant for the gruesome in our movies, we could expect most directors to do just that. But what happens when a director decides to show something that Shakespeare has taken six eloquent lines to evoke? You have a choice – you can leave the lines in, expecting that their richness will enhance your scene. Or you can save time, avoid redundancy and cut them out. Because current film attendees expect their movies to be roughly two hours and most of Shakespeare’s plays clock in around three, a lot of directors opt for the latter.

So, as you watch the Radford, be aware of a few techniques that make filmed Shakespeare unique and which point to the power of film as a medium. First, Shakespeare film directors tend to add visually evocative openings that set theme, tone, and specific imagery before the first lines of the play even begin. Here, Radford will walk you through the busy streets of Venice where you’ll see the tension between Christians and Jews, between the puritanical and the prurient (those are prostitutes with their breasts exposed), and he’ll establish Antonio and Shylock’s animosity as well as Lorenzo and Jessica’s love. When Shylock complains that Antonio spit on him, you will have already seen that, and Shylock’s motivation for what follows will be clearer.

Second, filmmakers have space. And they’re not afraid to use it. Look at the establishing shots of the Rialto and of Belmont, the latter a little island in larger body of water. These expand Shakespeare’s world, and thus make the denizens of it smaller. On stage, Othello, Hamlet, Romeo, and Shylock are huge in comparison, and their love, their torment, their rise and fall, their marriages have weight. On screen, the filmmaker must compensate for the fact that movies reduce the human scale. And how they do this is our third point.

The filmmaker is in control of the viewer’s eye, while stage productions are not. We must look where the camera tells us to – at close-ups, at reaction shots instead of the speaker, at visual metaphors. Shylock may be saying “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”, but the camera might be looking at a bored Salarino. Or it could be coming in for a tight shot on Shylock’s somber face. The director’s choice affects how you understand the line. One makes Shylock a prating knave, the other a spokesperson for modern multiculturalism who deserves our sympathy. And because of shots like closeups or flashbacks or cut in shots of symbolic objects, we can be much more in tune with a character’s inner psychology than the stage gives us access to. Read Shylock and you determine motivation and character from what he says, what is said about him, and your perceived subtext. Watch Shylock on film, and you know about him from what the director shows you in parallel with what he says, what is said about him, etc. Does Radford shows us flashbacks of Shylock playing as a little boy, being taunted by scornful nuns? Thankfully, no, but if he did, you’d have a much different sense of his motivation and animosity toward Antonio.

Radford’s film, whatever else we can say about Shakespeare on film and the director’s approach to the work, is a thing of beauty. The cinematography is gorgeous and sumptuously composed, displaying a deft use of color and costume to shape the films tone and mood. The acting is likewise unassailable. Pacino, Pacino!, is great as Shylock. Fiennes’s Bassanio is cute and knows it. Collins’s Portia offers both the necessary attractiveness and intelligence; she’s not so brittle as Gwyneth Paltrow nor so unsophisticated as Clare Danes. Irons’s Antonio is so morose he looks like he’d puke if you offered him a hug. He’s just not going to feel better, thank you very much. Radford cuts a lot of lines. If you’re a purist you may be angry. If you’re not you may still wonder, what is left of Shakespeare when you take out so much of his language?

Either way, we hope you enjoy the show. We wouldn’t miss it for a wilderness of monkeys.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser